Switzerland Tourism - Religious Tourism

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Switzerland Tourism has been courting US religious groups – many of whom organise group trips for their congregations – to entice them to explore Switzerland's religious history.
"It's an interesting market and it's growing," Herrmann said. "These groups don't just want to see religious sites, but it's the hook that brings them to our country."

The tourism office is marketing everything from the eighth century St Gallen abbey - a Unesco World Cultural Heritage Site – to the International Museum of Reformation in Geneva.
On its website, Switzerland Tourism highlights scores of historical religious sites in five Swiss regions and offers information on lodging in abbeys, cloisters and monasteries.

But religious tourists can also be easily put off: after a story in the New York Times about a growing number of nude hikers wandering the Alps, near Appenzell, a number of American groups cancelled their trips to Switzerland, according to Herrmann.